The mist was really low over the Hangzhou cemetery that morning. It was around the gravestones like a wet blanket.
Lin Yue was walking on the path she knew well. Her black shoes were quiet on the gravel. She had a basket with her, It was filled with oranges and incense sticks and lots of joss paper.
The Hangzhou cemetery smelled like dirt and rain that morning.
Lin Yue walked with steps looking at the gravestones. The oranges and incense sticks were, for the people who were buried at the Hangzhou cemetery. She went to visit the Hangzhou cemetery to pay respects to the deseased husband and daughtr.
It was the Qingming Festival, the day people visit their loved ones graves.
Her parents used to go with her. They stopped after the first time. They could not stand to see her sitting by the graves for a time talking to the people who died in a voice that was always steady and calm.
Lin Yue would talk to the dead for hours. Her voice never shook or got sad. She walked up to the two graves that were standing side to side under a tree.
The one on the left has, Zhao Jun, Beloved Husband and Father 1991-2022 on it. The other one was smaller has; Zhao Tiantian, Our Precious Daughter, 2016-2022.
Lin Yue ran her finger over the words, on the headstones.
It hs been 3-years since that night that changed everything for Lin Yue. That night split her life into two parts- the time before it happened and the time after.
Lin Yue thought about Zhao Jun and Zhao Tiantian a lot. She missed Zhao Jun and Zhao Tiantian much.
She put the oranges down gently at the bottom of each headstone.
Tiantian really loved oranges. She would take the skin off slowly. Laugh when it came apart in a spiral shape.
Lin Yue still remembered that laugh it was so happy and loud.. When she thought about it now she did not feel anything.
The memory of Tiantian and the oranges was still in her mind it was very clear.. It did not make her feel anything, in her heart anymore.
She lit the incense sticks. Watched as the thin streams of smoke went up and disappeared into the mist. The smoke was really thin. It just vanished.
She started burning the joss paper. She put the sheets into a metal basin. There was paper money and paper clothes and even a paper house. These things were supposed to be real in the afterlife.
The woman wondered if the people she was burning the joss paper for were actually somewhere.. Maybe they were just gone.
Maybe they stopped existing all of a sudden. The incense sticks and joss paper were for them. She hoped the paper money and paper clothes and paper house would be real for them, in the afterlife.
The paper was all burned up. Lin Yue looked at the pictures on the headstones. Zhao Jun was smiling at her in one of the pictures his eyes all wrinkly at the corners.
Tiantian was smiling too she had a gap where her front tooth should have been and her hair was in little ponytails with butterfly clips. Lin Yue thought about how old her daughter would be she would be nine years old.
But that is not how things worked out instead Tiantian is a little six-year-old girl, in a picture frozen in time forever. Lin Yue thought about her daughter Tiantian and the life they would never have.
Lin Yue said this softly her voice was steady. She told them that it would happen soon my loves, very soon.
Lin Yue never cried when she spoke to them. The old Lin Yue was the one who cried the one who died with her family.
Lin Yue is not that person anymore. Lin Yue has no tears left now. Lin Yue has something instead. Lin Yue has a reason to keep going she has purpose. That is what drives Lin Yue.
Before she left she cleaned the headstones well and made sure the oranges were lined up just right. She wanted everything to be so.
She had to have control, over it all. "I love you " she told them because that is how she really felt even if she did not feel it in her heart anymore.
"I am doing this for the people I love " she said, meaning every word, thinking of the people who were buried there the people she was talking about to the people she loved.
***
The bus ride home was really crowded. Her mind started thinking about something and moved on from remembering things.
The three years of getting ready for this were almost finished. She was thinking about the part of the bus ride and what would happen after that the three years of preparation were almost over, for her.
Her apartment was really empty. It did not feel like her own space.
She made jasmine tea, which's Zhao Juns favorite and she drank it very slowly but she could not taste anything.
Then she walked to the bedroom the one that she always kept locked and she pulled a key from, around her neck.
Inside the room the Zhang family was everywhere.
The walls were covered with things like photographs of the Zhang family newspaper articles about the Zhang family maps that had something to do with the Zhang family and schedules that belonged to the Zhang family.
There were also notes written in her handwriting and all of these things were connected with red string
The red string made it look like a web showing how all the things, about the Zhang family were related to each other. The Zhang family was really her obsession.
Lin Yue looked over what she had done. She had been watching the Zhang family for three years and planning what to do.
Lin Yue knew the Zhang family well even better than the Zhang family knew themselves.
Lin Yue knew how to take the Zhang family down one step at a time until there was nothing left of the Zhang family but chaos and sorrw.
"Soon," she whispered. "Very soon now."